After a solid start to the month, the market has succumbed to typical August weakness. Through today, DJIA is off nearly 2.5% this month. While thanks to gains from Apple, S&P 500 and NASDAQ are off less, approximately 1.4% and 0.5% respectively. The preverbal “wall of worry” has grown lately. Improving economic data has renewed concerns that the Fed will begin tapering its bond purchases sooner rather than later. Egypt is once again front page news and energy prices are spiking as a result. Add in a few negative earnings reports, like those from Wal-Mart (WMT) and Cisco (CSCO) today, in a low volume trading environment, and the biggest decline since late June is an easy result. Read full post